Ultrathin Coating of Confined Pt Nanocatalysts by Atomic Layer Deposition for Enhanced Catalytic Performance in Hydrogenation Reactions

Metal-support interfaces play a prominent role in heterogeneous catalysis. However, tailoring the metal-support interfaces to realize full utilization remains a major challenge. In this work, we propose a graceful strategy to maximize the metal-oxide interfaces by coating confined nanoparticles with an ultrathin oxide layer. This is achieved by sequential deposition of ultrathin Al2O3 coats, Pt, and a thick Al2O3 layer on carbon nanocoils templates by atomic layer deposition (ALD), followed by removal of the templates. Compared with the Pt catalysts confined in Al2O3 nanotubes without the ultrathin coats, the ultrathin coated samples have larger Pt-Al2O3 interfaces. The maximized interfaces significantly improve the activity and the protecting Al2O3 nanotubes retain the stability for hydrogenation reactions of 4-nitrophenol. We believe that applying ALD ultrathin coats on confined catalysts is a promising way to achieve enhanced performance for other catalysts.